Jan Bosch
Wherever Agile principles and practices took a foothold in industry, the word “process” became anathema. In many ways, this was a healthy reaction to the CMMI approach to software engineering that preceded it and that was extremely focused on process. It turns out that in addition to process, we actually need architecture, technology, teams, commitments, … Read more
Even if many of us conceptually agree with the notion of data-driven decision-making, it’s my experience that many still fall back into old-fashioned opinion-based decision-making. These opinions are formed by experience and for most of history, making decisions based on experience was a great principle as the pace of change was very slow. The challenge … Read more
One of the concepts I think is poorly understood by many is the notion of modularization. Generally, most people will consider a more modular system as preferable to a less modular system. As a consequence, modularity is viewed as positive and generally used as an alternative word for “good.” My concern with this view is … Read more
Sometime last year, I had a discussion with senior leaders of an automotive tier-1 supplier. I explained to them that if we’re serious about moving towards DevOps in automotive, their customer-project-centric approach would have to change. A typical car model is developed for three to four years, then manufactured for around seven years and the … Read more
While the last posts were about the business dimension of digitalization, there obviously is a technology side to it as well. Digitalization requires the company to build new technical capabilities, specifically around the use of data and artificial intelligence, but the primary challenge is, in my experience, concerned with system and software architecture. The system … Read more
So far, the posts in this series have stressed that the continuous value delivery to customers, rather than the transactional model, affects all parts of the company. One of the areas often ignored or seen too late as playing an important role is customer support. In many companies, this team is assumed to already have … Read more
For most of my life, I’ve worked in engineering. I worked as a programmer during my university studies. Built my own compilers while conducting my PhD research as I looked into alternative object-oriented programming languages. Worked in industry as a vice president on the engineering side and, of course, I published hundreds of papers on … Read more
Digitalization allows companies to fundamentally improve the way they deliver value to customers from transactional to continuous. Transactional value delivery is where a mostly physical product is sold as-is and then deteriorates over time until it’s replaced with the next product. Continuous value delivery is concerned with using the installed base as an enabler to … Read more
For all the talk about digitalization over the last decade or more, I still run into many people outside of software R&D who are convinced that digitalization is a technical problem that doesn’t concern them. Often, it’s viewed as an opportunity for improving the efficiency of existing processes and ways of working. The result is … Read more
During the last weeks, I reflected on the research activities in the Software Center for which I am the director and I realized that everything we do with the partner companies and the universities is concerned with increasing the pace at which we are delivering new value to customers. Whereas most companies, a decade ago, … Read more
